Volpone

(Harrow County School play, produced by B. E. Williams  in April 1962)

VOLPONE or The Fox by Ben Jonson

Cast (in order of appearance)

Volpone is a play of sufficient richness and complexity to allow of more than one interpretation through the kind of emphasis given in production: of the three elements, farce, satire and disgust, which mainly constitute its extraordinary vitality, Mr. B. E. Williams gave full value to the first two in an inventive and sensitive production, which held the vitality in a style reminiscent of Rowlandson rather than Hogarth.

Farce and satire - it was the principal mark of the authority of the production that the balance between the two was found, and developed through the play: if one were to try to separate the two, then Ingram, as mosca, was clearly chosen to be the spirit of satire.   It was he, in the seduction scene where habituation and indifference to evil reached its appalling and ludicrous climax, who defined the annihilation of moral response in a line the delivery of which gave us all the cold-blooded charm, the self-congratulation, the brutality, and over-reaching spite of the character.  It was a sharp portraiture of vice scorning vice - wasp rather than fly - a con man through and through, bustling, facile and glib, with a glittering charm overlaying the hardheaded opportunism of his greed, and full of a vitality that overflowed into gesture and intrigue.  In its discipline this performance could be marked as a first-rate example of concord between producer and actor.  It reached a taut authority in the inventory scene.

Michael Armstrong's Volpone sipplied the genius of farce, almost to the point where the actor's comic inventiveness began to send the balance of the play askew, and shade of Frankie Howard were almost about us.  The technique was good, laying bare the character of Volpone in the opening speeches with characteristic broad vigour.  The performance was full of interest - as Volpone's self approval became more and more lunatically reckless (even as Mosca became more cruelly dangerous), so the timing, the artful use of bathos and contrast, the wild walk, and impish fingering of his ginger moustache, and the difficult uses of parody and self-parody in styles of speech, became more hectic.  t was a splendidly vigourous performance, with gusto, a full awareness of the needs of the audience, and a fine sense of the ridiculous.

This sense of the ridiculous was strong in one of the best-appreciated scenes of the play where the fantastic interactions of the plot explode into the anarchy of farce, and are perfunctorily made sense again - here were the four Avocatori, played by Andrew Kasriel, Michael Fulton, Peter Gold, and Martin McCluney.  They managed between them to represent a veritable catalogue of the traditional qualities of the Law, at once pompous, credulous, confused, greedy, overwined, senile and so on: it was rich, and the richest was the unforgettably ashen, palsied, and aggrieved McCluney.

Among the supporting actors, the most clearly outstanding was Francis Pugh.   Contending with the jokes of a few hundred years past and with a part most uncomfortably devoid of action, his timing, phrasing and gesture were immaculate, wholly part of the man he was, and he showed very well what flair and intelligence may do in response to effective production.  Derek Morris showed considerable development in voice, presence and movement, and may be counted as one of our most promising actors: his part was neatly contrasted with that of Benjamin Lenthall, whose Corbaccio was impeccable; and Ian Gawn gave a good account of the harshness of Corvino.

Louis Hill as Celia had a very difficult task: nothing quite escapes Jonson's scourge, and innocence itself in Celia is weakly passive, in Bonario (an improved performance by Ronald Berg) credulous, and in both cliché-ridden: neverthless she put a great deal into this part and conveyed the delicacy and pathos of the character delightfully.  As Lady Would-Be, Jane Jackson was effectively the Anglo-Saxon dragoness, though lacking the ability fully to project her voice.  I must mention here David Backhouse, who gave a carefully studied account of Peregrine in support of Pugh's Sir Pol.

The production as a whole takes as an emblem in memory Anthony Mansell darting fluently and briliiantly about the set, always controlled, elegant and amusing, and adding some delightful detail to the picture, with harry Levine and Thomas Lake.  The scenery had the sharp linear quality and the freshness of colour we associate with Mr. Anderson's work, and here Pugh, Armstrong and Triggs also had a hand.  the construction enabled scene changes (which could have been troublesome in this play) to be neatly contrived, and the lighting of Dolling and Dyson undoubtedly was the most effective we have seen.   Liveliness, colour, pace, and humour were the striking qualities of the production which had for epilogue the most expressive Producer's Speech of all time - but that, as the Duke of York is supposed to have said, is neither here nor there.

J. G. Robertson

(Gaytonian 1962)

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